NA'[:Y]ANG-WIT'E, THE FIRST RABBIT DRIVE
The Basket Woman was walking over the mesa with the great carrier at herback. Behind her straggled the children and the other women of thecampoodie, each with a cone-shaped basket slung between her shoulders.Alan clapped his hands when he saw them coming, and ran out along thepath.
"You come see rabbit drive," she said, twinkling her shrewd black eyesunder the border of her basket cap. Alan took hold of a fold of herdress as he walked beside her, for he was still a little afraid of theother Indians, but since the time of his going out to see the buzzardsmaking a merry-go-round, he knew he should never be afraid of the BasketWoman again. The other women laughed a great deal as they looked at him,showing their white teeth and putting back the black coarse hair out oftheir eyes, and Alan felt that the things they said to each other wereabout him, though they could hardly have been unpleasant with so muchsmiling. Now he could see the men swarm out of the huts under the hill,all afoot but a dozen of the old men, who rode small kicking ponies at atremendous pace, digging their heels into the horses' ribs. They passedup the mesa in a blur of golden dust; westward they dwindled to a speck,something ran between them from man to man, now thick like a cord, thenshaken out and vanishing in air. Then the riders dropped from theirhorses and fumbled on the ground. Alan plucked at the Basket Woman'sdress.
"Tell me what it is they do," he said.
"It is the net which they set with forked stakes of willow," answeredthe Basket Woman. Now the young men and the middle-aged began to form aline across the mesa, standing three man's lengths apart in the sage.Some of them were armed with guns and others had only clubs; all weremerry, laughing and calling to one another. They began to move forwardevenly with a marching movement, beating the brush as they went.Presently up popped a rabbit from the sage and ran before them in longflying leaps; far down the line another bounded from a stony wash, hislean flanks turned broadside to the sun.
Then the hunters broke into shouts of laughter and clapping, then onebegan to sing and the song passed from man to man along the line; thenthe men crouched a little as Indians do in singing, then their bodiesswayed and they stamped with each staccato note as they moved forward.Rabbits sprang up in the scrub and went before them like the wind, andas each one leaped into view and laid back his ears in flight, the criesand laughter grew and the singing rose louder. The wind blew it back tothe women and children straggling far behind, who took it up, and theburden of it was this,--
E - ya - ha hi, E - ya, E - ya - hi!]
But every man sang it for himself, beginning when he liked and leavingoff, and when a rabbit started up under foot or one over-leaped himselfand went sprawling to the sand the refrain broke out again, but thewords, when there were any, seemed not to have anything to do with thehunt, and sounded to Alan like a game.
"_He-yah-hi, hi!_ he has it; he has it, he has the white, he has it!"
"_Na'yang-wit'e!_" chuckled the Basket Woman. "_Na'yang-wit'e,na'yang-wit'e!_ It is as it was of old time, look now and you shallsee."
Alan looked at the hunters again, and whether it was because of theblown dust of the mesa, or the quiver of heat that rose up from thesand, or because the Basket Woman had laid her hand upon him, he sawthat they were not as they had been a moment since. Now they wore nohats and were naked from the waist up, clothed below with deerskingarments. Quivers of the skin of cougars with the tails hanging downwere slung between their shoulders, and the arrows in them were pointedwith tips of obsidian and winged with eagle feathers. Every man carriedhis bow or his spear in his hand. Bright beads and bits of many-coloredshell hung and glittered in their hair. Rabbits went before them likegrasshoppers for number, and the song and the shouting were fierce andwild. "But what is it all about?" asked Alan.
"_Na'yang-wit'e, na'yang-wit'e_," laughed the Basket Woman. "Wait and Iwill tell you the story of that song, for it is so that every song hasits story, without which no one may understand it. It is not well to gotoo near the guns; sit you here and I will tell."
So Alan bent down the sagebrush to make him a springy seat and theBasket Woman sat upon the ground with her hands clasped about her knees.
"Long and long ago," said the Basket Woman, "when men and beasts talkedtogether, there were none so friendly and none so much about thewickiups as the rabbit people, and some of our fathers have told thatit was they who taught my people the game of _na'yang-wit'e_. I knownot if that be true, but there were none so cunning as they to play it.And this is the manner of the game: there should be two sticks, orbetter, two bits of bone of the fore leg of a deer, made smooth andsmall to fit the palm. One of them is all white and the other has sinewof deer stained black and wound about it. These the players pass fromhand to hand, and another will guess where is the place of the white,and he who guesses best shall win all the other's goods. It is goodsport playing, and between man and man it comes even in the end, forsometimes one has the goods and sometimes another, but when my peopleplayed with the rabbit people it was not good, for the rabbits won everytime. Then my people drew together, all the Indians of every sort, andmade a great game against the rabbit people. There were two long rowsacross the mesa, and between them were all the goods piled high, all thebeads and ornaments of shell, all the feather work and fine dresseddeerskin, all the worked moccasins, the quivers, the bows, all theblankets, the baskets, and the woven mats. So they played at sunrise, soat noon, so when it was night and the fires were lit. So on into thenight, and when it was morning the game was done, for the Indians had nomore goods. _Ay-aiy!_" said the Basket Woman, "long will the rabbitpeople sorrow for that day, for it was then that the Indians firstcontrived together how they might be rid of them. Then they gathered upthe milkweed," and she reached out and plucked a tall stem of it growingbeside her, white flowered and slender, with fine leaves like grass."Then they broke it so," and she laid it across a stone and beat itlightly with a stick, "then they drew out the threads soft and white,and so they rolled it into string."
She stretched the fibre with one hand and rolled it on her knee with theother, twisting and twining it. "Thus was the string made and afterwardwoven into nets. The mesh of the net was just enough to let a rabbit'shead through, but not his body, and the net was a little wider than arabbit's jump when he goes fast and fleeing, and long enough to stretchhalf across the world. So on a day the net was set and the drive wasbegun as you have seen it, and as the Indians went they remembered theiranger and taunted the rabbit people. So the song of _Na'yang-wit'e_ wasmade. Now let us go and see how it fares with the rabbit people, for asit was of old so will it be to-day."
All this time the line of men moved steadily across the mesa toward thenet. Now and then a rabbit turned, made bold by fright, and passedbetween the men as they marched. Then the nearest turned to shoot him ashe ran, but it was left to the women to pick up the game. Already theforemost rabbits were at the net, turned back by it, leaping toward thehunters and fleeing again to the net. The old men closed in the ends ofthe lane where the rabbits ran about distractedly with shrill squeals ofanguished fear. Some got their heads through the mesh but never theirbodies, and as it is not the nature of rabbits to go backward theystruggled and cried, getting themselves the more entangled; some blindwith their haste came against it in mid-leap, and were thrown backstunned upon the sand. The men sang no more, for they had work to do,serious work, for on the dried flesh of the rabbits and the blanketsmade of their skins the campoodie must largely count for food and warmthin the winter season. They closed in to the killing and made short workof it with clubs and the butt ends of their guns. Then the women came upwith the children and heaped up the great carriers with the game whilethe men wrung the sweat from their foreheads and counted up the kill.Most of the rabbits were the kind Alan had learned to call jack rabbits,but the Basket Woman picked up a fat little cotton-tail.
"This is little Tavwots," said she, "and you shall have him for yoursupper." Alan's mind still ran on the story of the first drive. "But isit true?" he
asked her, before he had given thanks for the gift.
"Now this is the sign I shall give you that the tale is true," said theBasket Woman. "Ever since that day if one of the rabbit people meets anIndian in the trail he flees before him as you saw them flee to-day, andthat is because of _na'yang-wit'e_ and the first rabbit drive." Then shelaughed, but Alan took his share of the kill on his shoulder and wentback across the mesa slowly, wondering.
From photograph by A. A. Forbes A "WICKIUP," OR INDIAN HUT]
Basket Woman: A Book of Indian Tales for Children Page 15
